Posts Tagged ‘who authored Obama’s Dreams From My Father’

As the media, and now the arts community continues to fawn over Barack Obama, I begin to wonder if it would even matter if Barack Obama were exposed for not having authored Dreams From My Father. Two things must be mentioned when considering the question. First, as a result of Dreams From My Father and the Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama has been touted by some as the greatest political writer of our time. On the other hand, there is growing evidence that Barack Obama did not write Dreams From My Father and that it was either ghost written entirely or at the very least co-authored by William Ayers. So the question remains, does it matter?

…is it any wonder, then, that “Dreams from My Father” is the latest Obama project to be targeted by the right wing? Since the Presidential campaign, rumor has circulated among certain constituencies that Bill Ayers was the real author of “Dreams,” but recent comments (read: jokes) made by Ayers have fueled the fire.

It is obvious in Law’s piece that she refuses to accept any notion of the premise that Ayers wrote or at least contributed to Dreams From My Father. Why wouldn’t an author, a supposedly, authentic journalist not at least look at the question on its merits? More importantly, Ms. Law never once mentions in her article that the recent fueling of the fire by Ayers was predated by an important fact that came out a week or so earlier, i.e., respected author Christopher Andersen as reported by WND wrote in his book Barack and Michelle: Portrait of a Marriage :

…Obama was faced with a deadline with the Times Books division of Random House to submit his manuscript after already having canceled a contract with Simon & Schuster. Confronted with the threat of a second failure, his wife, Michelle, suggested he seek the help of “his friend and Hyde Park neighbor Bill Ayers.”

Obama had taped interviews with relatives to flesh out his family history, and those “oral histories, along with a partial manuscript and a truckload of notes, were given to Ayers,” writes Andersen.

The author quotes a neighbor in the Hyde Park area of Chicago where Obama and Ayers lived, who says of the two, “Everyone knew they were friends and that they worked on various projects together.”

“It was no secret. Why would it be? People liked them both,” the neighbor said, according to Andersen.

In fairness to Sally Law, the mainstream media has not widely reported the admissions in Andersen’s book; however, it is unlikely that Sally Law having followed the recent Ayers’ suspect admissions of writing Dreams From My Father was completely unaware of excerpts from Andersen’s book “fueling” the renewed controversy. So why would she leave such a critical piece of information out of her article? One possible answer is because it legitimizes the claim that Barack Obama had help writing Dreams From My Father which dispels the notion that Obama is a brilliant writer which bolstered his credentials to make his Presidential run and secure his eventual victory.

It is this type of disingenous reporting that creates a climate that attempts to make the public believe these types of criticisms are simple conspiracy theory or rightwing nuthouse stuff. But Christopher Andersen is no right winger. He has always been characterized as a thoughtful author, and his book about the Obama marriage is overall very favorable to the Obama family. Why supress the portion of his book that makes it seem plausible that Ayers contributed to Dreams From My Father? Of course, the answer is obvious. Sychophants must protect Obama at all costs, but are they really protecting him in the end?

If you think I may be overstating the media’s reaction to Obama’s authorship of Dreams of My Father take this quote from Rocco Landesman, the newly appointed President of the Natural Endowment of the Arts, where he wrote less than ten days ago:

This is the first president that actually writes his own books since Teddy Roosevelt and arguably the first to write them really well since Lincoln. If you accept the premise, and I do, that the United States is the most powerful country in the world, then Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar.

I would argue, they are not protecting Barack Obama by covering up the authorship of his book or by overstating his credentials, and this is why this issue does matter. By covering up the authorship of Dreams From My Father, the media continues to present the façade of Obama’s credentials. If he really wasn’t the sole author of Dreams From My Father, then he may also not be the brilliant politician the media has made him out to be. And if this critical point is a façade, then much of his qualifications for the position he holds are a sham. I argue that we see that façade and sham on display every day throughout his Presidency. He has spent the first 10 months of his Presidency continuing to campaign which is what a presidential candidate spends his time doing rather than leading which is how an actual President spends his time. The media can continue to cover for his shortcomings, but the nation will continue to see through the veil of deception and his Presidency will continue to be a four year campaign resulting in nothing positive for the improvement of our nation over the same period of time.

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